Music 680: Special Topics in Music Theory - Electronics in Performance (Fall 2006)
Class 9: November 6, 2006

George Crumb and Brian Ferneyhough
	as reponses to modernism
		Crumb as collage, historical reference, theater/ritual, and nonwestern influence
			(though remember these issues have been at the heart of modernism since Picasso & co.)
		Ferneyhough also adopts collage/nonlinearity, theater/ritual ("Electric Chair music")
			(and more recently in Shadowtime, historical reference)
		but also a kind of corrosive irony: piling structure on top of structure beyond plausibility
			and thus sabotaging the values of 1950s serialism
	as low-tech (and its continuing efficacy, in the right hands)

Brian Ferneyhough Time and Motion Study II
	a certain kind of extreme point in Ferneyhough's ouevre: "Electric Chair Music"
	use of tape delay as an investigation into musical memory
		the recent past, filtered and distorted
		test for both the performer and the audient: which features are salient?
	tendency for texture, register, dynamics to be the perceptually marked features
	overlapping algorithms make pitch and rhythmic structures difficult to analyze
		(although broad features should be apparent)
	slow tempo as highly characteristic: the bar as a "temporal container"
		(but with the downbeat as both a coordinating principle and musical feature)

George Crumb Black Angels
	as a response to the Vietnam War
	the new resources offered by amplification: monody and massed
	collage / texture as opportunities for evocation of the past, of political subtexts, nonwestern culture
		e.g., the viol consort-music, Dies Irae, Dowland, Tod und Das MŠdchen
	notation as a graphic experience
		above and beyond the necessary but evoking the ritual and psychology of the work
		(and the theater necessary to convey that ritual)
	A, D#, and E as central pitches
		mobility vs. stability
	transformation and echo/repetition as the principal shaping forces
	symmetrical arrangement of movements....
		Threnody I
			symmetrical arrangement around F is gradually compressed
			91 beats = 13 X 7
		Sounds of Bones and Flutes
			13 beat gestures repeated (6 eighth notes plus 7 sixteenths)
			minor ninth becomes major seventh, then combined with tritone (in the sixteenths)
		Lost Bells
			the bowed tam-tam as one of many transformed sustaining events
			repeating the "echo" strategy of Threnody I (systems 2/3)
		Devil-Music
			first instance of the Dies Irae in the pedal tones - violin 2, viola
			constant presence of the [016] formation
				as the devil's tritone and the fiddler's fifth
		Danse Macabre
			as more presence of the Dies Irae
			as Bones and Flutes refracted through the Devil-Music
		Pavana Lachrymae
			and Death and the Maiden
		Threnody II
			transitions between tutti and polyphony
		Saraband
			as parallel to the Pavana
		Lost Bells
			emphasizing the D#/F trill
		God-Music
			as B-major, more or less
			sustained tones in cello line as "normal instrument sound"
			trills relating to insects/bells
			also repeating the "echo" strategy of Threnody I
		Ancient Voices (Echo)
			as melody without the trilled accompaniment
			conclusion combines with saraband

Pd techniques: more on abstractions
	$1, $2, ... $n and objects: default values passed into an abstraction at load-time
	$1, $2, ... $n and messages: values passed into a message at run-time
	$0 and objects: making local variables (arrays, send/receive pairs) unique to an abstraction
		so that multiple copies of that abstraction don't conflict with one another

preview of next week: Murail Desintegrations, Harvey Tombeau de Messaien (scores on reserve)
final project proposals are due Monday, November 13